Semiconductor devices with various functions, such as memory, transistor, and capacitor, may be embedded in the same integrated circuit (IC). As such, the fabricating processes for the different semiconductor devices with different material need to be designed and integrated all together.
A memory device is commonly embedded in a system on chip (SOC) integrated circuits having peripheral circuits like complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic circuits. Generally, there are volatile memory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and static random access memory (SRAM), or non-volatile memory (NVM), including read only memory (ROM) and flash memory, in a memory structure, as well as a logic circuit like p-type metal oxide semiconductor (PMOS), n-type metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS), and COMS. A non-volatile memory normally includes a stacked gate structure which has a floating gate and a control gate positioned directly above the floating gate, and a split gate cell structure which has the control gate positioned above but offset from the floating gate. The split-gate cell normally includes an additional gate known as a select gate which involves relatively complex manufacturing processing operations. In this regard, integrating the split gate memory cells on a SOC requires additional lithography steps which with more masks or reticules and higher cost.